Why am I here?
God has a plan for you
You were created by God and personally designed and equipped by him with distinctive features and gifted talents that make you a unique individual in all of human history. There has never been another human being in this world exactly like you. And you have a personal soul that is uniquely you that is designed by God to exist forever, even after your physical body dies. And the basic feature of God’s plan for you is that you were created to live forever with him in a personal relationship of love and cooperative fellowship. This was God’s initial plan for the creation of all human beings, and it is still his initial plan in his ongoing creation of human beings.
The corruption of his personal plan for you
The sinful nature that you have inherited from Adam and Eve, your primary personal ancestors from the beginning of the human race, has corrupted God’s special and direct plans for you by generating within you a strong desire to seek to implement your own will by refusing to trust him to direct you to what is good that he has provided for you as you seek to live in a relationship with him rather than living in accord with your passionate nature and selfish desires.
The offer of his plan for you
When God, through his Spirit, calls you to repent of your personal and arrogant rejection of his wise and loving will to provide you with all that is good then you should receive that as his personal and direct invitation to live forever in a personal relationship with him and his Son, Jesus, who died for you to pay the penalty of your sin and the Spirit who is his direct personal agent of God’s revelation and wise and loving will in your life. This called invitation may come through a message that you hear or read from a preacher or teacher of God’s word, or something in the Bible that you read for yourself, or something that a friend or relative shares with you about God and his love, or something that you observe in his creation and redemptive work in this world. In spite of your basic inherited tendency to reject God and his will for your life, he may continue to offer you his plan for you several times in your daily experiences in your efforts to acquire what is good in your life, or he may only make this offer to you once in a general or directly personal way. This offer is always made in accord with God’s absolute sovereign will and love for his creation, including you.
The implementation of his plan for you
When you accept his personal and direct invitation to trust him for his providential care and wise loving guidance in your life, then God gives you the gift of his Spirit as a indwelling power to enable you to be redeemed from the corrupting influences of Satan in your life and to live in accord to his personal and unique plan for your life. This gift and its power are described by Paul in this teaching to the Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not the results of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”. (Ephesians 2:8-10) And he further explains this in this teaching regarding our blessings from Jesus: “For through him we both (Jews and Gentiles) have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then we are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit”. (Ephesians 2:18-22) This is God’s tremendous plan for you to enable you to become a very particular part of God’s “holy temple” for service with others for his glory forever. According to Paul, this is really good “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose”. (Romans 8:28)
Scripture quotations are from the ESV Study Bible English Standard Version. (ESV®), copyright © 2008 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
